B+
Even if the thought of a family holiday movie makes you cringe, you might consider making an exception for this one. Bright, witty and delightfully off-kilter, it’s a very Aardman Christmas story that even a Scrooge should enjoy.
The clever script by Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith takes off from the utterly understandable questions that any intelligent modern child might ask about the Santa Claus story. How can Santa’s career have stretched to so many centuries? How can the old gent visit every house in a single night? Why can’t a Google search reveal the location of his North Pole domicile? They occur in a letter written by a suspicious tyke from a small English village, Gwen (Ramona Marquez), which reaches the desk of Santa’s younger son Arthur (James McAvoy), a typically gangly, good-natured Aardman misfit type who replies that Saint Nick will sweep away her doubts by delivering the new bike she’s asked for.
The reality is that Santa (Jim Broadbent) is but the latest in a long family line of jolly red-suited gift-givers, and he’s become a mere figurehead. The entire operation has been re-organized and directed with military precision by his eldest son and heir-apparent, Steve (Hugh Laurie). The toys are now transported via a huge red spaceship that runs on fuel made from milk and cookies, and though the somewhat befuddled Mr. Claus occasionally makes a delivery himself, most of the presents are actually placed beneath the proper trees by well-trained elves who rappel down to the ground on long lines like special forces troops.
Unfortunately, as a result of a snafu involving a child woken during the operation, one gift fails to be delivered—Gwen’s bike, of course. Steve dismisses it as the merest glitch, and the exhausted Santa prefers to forget the matter, but Arthur is determined to rectify the omission. He sets off on an unauthorized journey with his sassy old grandpa (Bill Nighy), a grizzled chap who’s still irked at having been retired involuntarily and scornful of the modernization Steve has imposed on the operation. Grandsanta takes his old sleigh out of mothballs, summons his reindeer from their stables and, with the aid of some magic dust, is soon streaking across the sky with Arthur. They’re unexpectedly joined by a stowaway, a super-dedicated elf named Bryony (Ashley Jensen) who believes in Arthur’s mission and gets to show off her special talent at gift-wrapping as the trip wears on.
The journey doesn’t go without a hitch, of course. In fact there are plenty of them, ranging from misdirection that takes the sleigh through downtown Toronto and into the African desert, among other locales, and attracts the attention of defensive military planners in doing so. At every stop the scripters come up with delicious gags ranging from what happens when Santa’s magic dust is sprinkled on African wildlife to how Grandsanta attempts to fill out his complement of reindeer after losing one of them. And of course the trip ends in a slapsticky finale in which the current Santa, Steve, and Mrs. Claus (Imelda Staunton)—looking (and sounding) a lot like the Queen Mum—make welcome reappearances as the goal of getting Gwen’s bike in place before she wakes up becomes a split-second thing.
As so often is the case in such pictures, the central character, though likable and engaging, is ultimately less central to the success of the enterprise than some of the supporting ones, and here Nighy’s cantankerous Grandsanta very nearly steals the show. But Broadbent’s Santa and Staunton’s Mrs. Claus are winning, and Jensen’s Bryony has her moments. So do lots of lesser figures—an old elf with an antique radio connection to the sleigh, an over-the-hill reindeer who tags along on the trip, and the army of Santa’s helpers that man the myriad banks of computer consoles at North Pole Center, who act as sort of a holiday version of the minions in “Despicable Me.” Laurie’s Steve gets a little tedious, but that’s to be expected in a narrative that doesn’t have room for a genuine villain.
The voice work is excellent across the board, though the thick British accents may cause some trouble for American audiences, particularly the younger set. (There are cameos from the likes of Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Michael Palin, Joan Cusack, Robbie Coltrane and Andy Serkis, but most won’t spot them.) And the computer animation approximates the distinctive stop-motion look of Aardman’s pre-“Flushed Away” stop-motion efforts though it’s naturally smoother. The 3D format is amusingly employed to give the visuals extra punch, but as always it darkens the images severely. All one need do is remove the glasses for a moment to see how much brighter they are unclouded. (The configuration of those Dolby 3D glasses, moreover, can cause an unhelpful glare.)
The closest approximation to “Arthur Christmas” among earlier holiday pictures might be Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas.” It lacks the macabre sensibility of that film, of course, but matches it in quirky humor and imagination. Like it, it probably won’t be a massive success at the boxoffice, particularly because its very British tone might not play especially well with American audiences. (The same was true of earlier Aardman features, of course.) But especially compared to the junk that US studios produce in the way of Christmas movies—just think of “Surviving Christmas” and “Christmas With the Kranks,” or Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture “Christmas Carol”—this is a warm, cheerful winner.
The movie is preceded by a music video of Justin Bieber singing the perennial “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” The rendition is no great shakes—it treats the tune the same way today’s singers do the national anthem at sporting events, which is to say very loosely indeed. And it’s odd that since an alternate claymation version was also available—which would have been the perfect complement to an Aardman movie—the live-action one was used instead. It doesn’t add much, but perhaps it will draw some Biebsters into the theatre, and they can discover how much fun “Arthur Christmas” is.